Yesterday, the Dutch online community was surprised by a verdict from a judge who declared that The Pirate Bay had to make itself unavailable in The Netherlands. This verdict was cast in a case the Dutch RIAA/MPAA-like organisation BREIN had started against The Pirate Bay. With it being a widely known and established fact that downloading copyrighted content off the internet - even if the upload was illegal - is not illegal in The Netherlands, where does this verdict come from? Is it truly a win for the entertainment industry, and a loss for Dutch consumers? Not really - the situation is much, much simpler than that.

- Swedish authorities,
- Swedish bailiff
- email to the defendants' known e-mail address from which at least one of the defendants have replied in the past.
- The domain holder's e-mail address
- A letter to the lawyers from the last court case.
- registered mail to each of the defendants addresses.
- a Twitter post
- a Facebook post

So I would say it is hardly likely that they were unaware of the case. This ruling may, and quite possibly will, get overturned once the defendants have someone show up in court. That does not mean the "let's ignore it and hope it will go away" defense will work in the meantime.